This week it was officially announced that playstation plus it was going to become a subscription service with three plans starting in June, thus combining PS+ and PS Now. Although the new PS Plus could be compared to Xbox Game Pass, one of the biggest differences is that will not receive new releases from PlayStation Studios since its premiere. Although this disappointed some players, it is a decision that makes a lot of sense for Sony and here we will see why.
To understand why Sony doesn’t think it’s necessary to release new PlayStation Studios games on PS Plus right from the start, all we have to do is take a look at video game sales on PS4 and PlayStation 5. last few months we can notice that new releases sell very well on Sony platforms.
In video game sales during the month of February in North America we see Horizon Forbidden West in second place, which speaks of its good sales in the month of its release. If we look only at PlayStation console sales we see that Horizon II was the top seller, followed by Elden Ring and Dying Light 2: Stay Human, so the best seller of the month were three new games for PS4 and PS5 players.
Elden Ring was February’s best-selling game almost worldwide and in the UK the best-selling version was the one for PlayStation consoles, since they make up 41% of the total. However, 80% of physical sales in the region were on PlayStation consoles, well above the Xbox version which only corresponds to 17%. The funny thing is that most of these sales were on PS5, so in this region the new generation is doing very well.
February sales in Japan paint a similar picture, as its top 10 shows 5 Nintendo Switch games and 5 PlayStation games, of which they are all premieres: Elden Ring (PS4), Elden Ring (PS5), Horizon Forbidden West (PS4), Horizon Forbidden West (PS5), and Dying Light 2: Stay Human (PS4). As we can see, most of the sales are on last-gen consoles, which makes sense given their much larger user base.
As we can see, February went very well for the new releases on PlayStation consoles in all regions, especially its exclusive with Horizon Forbidden West, which also received very good reviews. In March, another PlayStation exclusive arrived that did not have the same positive reception, but has still enjoyed very good sales.
Gran Turismo 7 arrived in early March and was the UK’s best-selling game for 3 weeks in a row, dropping to 4th last week thanks to the release of Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Tiny Tina’s Wonderland. sales have remained Despite the criticism that the game has received, which has made it the worst rated on PlayStation by Metacritic users.
We still don’t know how Gran Turismo 7 fared in North America and Japan, but it will most likely be among the best-selling games on PlayStation. As we can see, PS4 and PlayStation 5 players have a habit of acquiring new games constantly, especially PlayStation Studios exclusives, so it makes sense that Sony doesn’t feel it necessary to add them to its PlayStation Plus service since its release.
According to Jim Ryan, one of the reasons why they do not plan to release their exclusives on PlayStation Plus from the start is because they would have to increase the price of the service, in addition to the fact that their studios would receive lower profits. Still, Jim Ryan admits that things could change in the futureplus Phil Spencer believes that Sony will follow the example of xbox Game Pass.